Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Editorial Pablum or "Hijabs at a Harvard Gym?"

In her March 26, 2008 Washington Post opinion, "Hijabs at a Harvard Gym," editorial writer and columnist Ruth Marcus describes accommodations made to Muslim believers by Ivy League university administrators as “a measure of America’s multicultural journey over the past half-century.” Marcus compliments Harvard's decision to close “one of its gyms to men for six hours a week so that Muslim women can exercise comfortably” and permit “broadcasting the Muslim call to prayer from the steps of Harvard’s main library during Islamic Awareness Week.” If these are merely innocent expressions of America’s "multicultural journey" then the frog in the kettle is almost cooked. (NOTE: "Multicultural journey" is a euphemism for “cultural death march.”)

Multiculturalism is canonical in liberal ideology. No one is so lost that they can’t be helped to see the light or integrated into our society. We just need to “try a little kindness.” Certain their magnanimity will placate their mistaken aggressors, liberal elites, as crewmembers of the Starship Enterprise did whenever they met aliens for the first time, begin every encounter with, “We mean you no harm.” Then, quicker than you can say “Beam me up Scotty!” a well-meaning "multi-culti" blurts out, “Look! We’ll even let you on the bridge of the Enterprise!” Any Trekkie will tell you that aliens on the bridge always ends badly. This blog entry would be too long if I tried to describe the disastrous effect this line of thinking is having in the European Union. If reading The Wests Last Chance by Tony Blankley or America Alone by Mark Steyn doesn't alarm you, then you may be on the verge of converting to Islam.

Somehow, broadcasting Adhan (Muslim call to prayer), "Allahu Akbar [sic “God is great”]. There is no God but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah,”outside Harvard’s main library doesn’t strike me as “the dawning of the Age of Aquarius” or the proper setting for a dogma that flies in the face of “academic freedom.” I’m stumped. Where is the inclusivity in “There is no God but Allah?” Maybe I recently awoke from a lengthy coma but what became of all the concern over separation of church and state-funded universities?

Islamic Awareness Week? If this isn't a practical joke, then I'd like to know who among earthlings (besides Rumpelstiltskin or Sleeping Beauty) is still not aware of Islam? Maybe a few of us are having difficulty embracing an “awareness” of Islam that asks us to believe that everything we’ve seen and heard, including the deafening silence from most of the Ummah Wahida (Islamic community) since 9/11 is not really Islam.

If they are paying attention, Harvard administrators may be aware that Islam in America will become a cultural and political force to be reckoned with if current trends continue. Start making concessions now. Feed the beast; maybe it will become sated and leave before eating you. This is where 'progressive' thinking is dangerously regressive and unaware about Islam. This beast will eat every appetizer you toss at him, but make no mistake; you are the main course, the pièce de résistance. There’s always room for dessert.

Marcus suggests that “the wisdom of the Framers” will guard us against going too far in making cultural accommodations to Islam. What a relief! You mean the way the wisdom of the Framers kept us from going too far as in Dred Scott v. Sandford (legitimizing slavery in America) or Roe v. Wade (50-million abortions since)? And I wonder how I got the notion that the "wisdom of the Framers" may not hold as much sway these days among liberal Ivy League university administrators. Silly me.

It is interesting to note that Harvard University Press, in a project that spans decades, is publishing The Adams Papers which chronicle the family histories and writings of Framer and second President of the United States, John Adams and those of his son, sixth President, John Quincy. John Quincy Adams, himself a Harvard Law graduate, wrote the following about Islam:

"In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar (Mohammed), the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic Law, the doctrine of one omnipotent god; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE [emphasis added] ... Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant ...While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon the earth, and good will towards men." (From "Unsigned essays dealing with the Russo-Turkish War, and on Greece,” written while Adams was in retirement, before his election to Congress in 1830; originally published in The American Annual Register.)

Call me Pollyannaish (like those Age of Aquarius folks), but I doubt JQA ever imagined that Adhan would one day reverberate from the steps of the main library of his alma mater. Unfortunately, with so much animus today toward the Framers' original intent by those in higher education and in our own Government, the Adams family would get less recognition than The Addams Family (monsters, all of them) and after his remark about Islam, John Quincy wouldn't pass Congressional scrutiny for a job as Lurch the butler.

Granted, Marcus says “accommodation has its limits.” Ok, what are the limits? Shouldn’t we know what “the limits” are before we start accommodating? And, when do we infidels start getting some accommodation from our (we’re certain) multicultural Muslim friends? Marcus advocates a “regime of reasonable accommodation,” but she doesn’t define “reasonable.” Shouldn’t we know what is non-negotiable before we start making concessions?

Making cultural accomodations (a.k.a special favors) to Islamists is not progress, but capitulation and belies a lack of confidence in our own culture and way of life. Hopefully we will realize this before it is too late.

1 comment:

Bravo to The Spin Cipher! All the best to you. The USA is definitely on a multicultural journey. This journey does have at least a quarter century history, probably more. Should the goal of truth lovers be to reverse this journey? Is the journey itself wrong? Totally wrong?Could it be that some aspects of this journey are alright, but we who love truth need to re-examine our role in radical ways?

About Me

"The Lord GOD hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned." "My tongue is the pen of a ready writer."

"The children of Issachar ... were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do."

"And Joses ... by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, which is, being interpreted, The son of encouragement."